Tiangong-1 breaks up over South Pacific on re-entry

A few days ago, scientists informed that the uncontrolled Chinese space station will hit the earth during the first week of April and that became true. The massive space station Tiangong-1 re-entry into earth’s atmosphere on Monday. Well, most of its part burned up over the central South Pacific Ocean. This has informed by Chinese space authorities. The authority stated, “Most of the parts were burned up in the re-entry process.” The Tiangong-1 re-entered into the atmosphere at around 8:15 a.m. in Beijing time. Scientists who were monitoring the space station had previously forecasted that Tainagong-1 will burn up and will bring slight risk to humans. But, it had mostly burned up without harming anyone.

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics stated “It did exactly what it was expected to do. The predictions, at least the past 24 hours’ ones, were spot on and as expected it fell somewhere empty and did no damage.” Leroy Chiao, a former U.S. astronaut who has participated in four space mission has stated that it will be surprised if major pieces survived during re-entry. Because it was not a big spacecraft and didn’t have any heat shields.

The re-entry of Tiangong-1 was successful, but it would have been better if that had not been hurtling toward Earth. Commenting on this, an astrophysicist at Australian National University, Brad Tucker stated “It could have been better if it wasn’t tumbling. But it landed in the Southern Pacific Ocean, and that is the kind of where you hope it would land.” Tucker further added that when a thing starts to come down while tumbling, it is difficult to predict what will happen next. For example, if a plane that is shaking around and tumbling, its more difficult to evaluate its landing zone.

Tiangong-1 was the China’s first space station which was launched in 2011. It worked as a platform which supported a bigger project like Taingong-2. It was launched in September 2013 and it is the permanent space station of China. It is expected that this spacecraft will help when the Congress will stop funding for the International Space Station. Last week, China informed that training for astronauts is under process. Its assembling process will be finished by 2020 and will be ready to function in 2022. As per the report, Tiangong-1 was las used in 2013 and during that time three team spent 12 days in the space station. Before 2016, it docked with three spacecrafts. Wang Yaping, a Chinese female astronaut had delivered a lecture from the space station to Earth. In March 2016 Chines space authority officially confirmed that it has lost control over the space station.

Some scientists previously predicted that around 10 percent of the 8.5-ton space station will survive the re-entry, like the heavier components- engines. When it was launched, the original plan was after the duration Chinese authority will guide the space station in a controlled way, like the Mir Space station. Normally there is a specific location for every debris from satellites and spacecraft generally. That place is called as that spacecraft graveyard and the space station has just fallen into that.

Well, there is nothing new in debris stages to fall to Earth. In 1979, the 77-ton Skylab, U.S.’s first space station crashed through the earth in an uncontrolled manner. Some of its parts were found near Perth, the southwest Australian city. For the Australian government fined the U.S. $400 for littering. Space outpost like Russia’s Mir station had made a controlled re-entry in 2001.